Search form

Reviews round-up

Ghosts of Empire by Kwasi Karteng

Labour MP Tristram Hunt admires this "compelling and important history of the British empire" in the Observer, by his colleague from the opposite benches, the Tory MP for Spelthorne. It goes fiercely against the Cameronite sense of history: "Its target is those neoconservative cheerleaders of empire - Niall Ferguson, Michael Gove - who regard British colonialism as a 'good thing' and the model for a modern Pax Americana.... Instead, Ghosts of Empire marks a return to traditional, Tory scepticism shorn of ideology and purpose. There is little rhyme or rhythm to this history". In the Telegraph George Walden noted that the problem was not an imperialist central government but the free reign given to the "cranks, oddballs and romantics" who ran the empire. Sholto Byrnes, in the Independent agrees, but is less pleased with the style, calling it merely "amusing and mostly well-written".

House of Holes by Nicholson Baker

"The real story here," writes James Lasdun in the Guardian, of Nicholson Baker's picaresque of comic smut, "is why the cleverly observant author of works such as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature has chosen to publish something at once so daft and so half-hearted. He calls it an 'Entertainment' but 'Wank Book' would have been more accurate." Set outside of normal spacetime, in the eponymous, fantastical sex-resort, a stroke of invention admired by Sam Lipsyte in The New York Times: "one of the loopier spots in literary memory -- Plato's Retreat by way of the Magic Mountain, or maybe the Oneida Community via Fantasy Island.... not even Mr. Roarke's paradise boasts 'pornsucker ships' (which fly over American cities and suck up the bad porn) or 'crotchal transfers'. Nor does it feature 'mastur­boats' or 'groanrooms' or a 'squat line' organized for the pleasure of female guests." In the LA Times, David L Ulin finds "an unexpected depth, a tenderness" to the novel, although "in the manner of superficial sex, [it] leaves us feeling oddly unfulfilled."

"House of Holes" will be reviewed in the next issue of the New Statesman.

Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts

The author of what Sukhdev Sandhu in the Guardian calls "an allusive, elusive creature - not quite memoir, fragmented social history, partial documentary", has lived in Harlem since 2004, when it was subject to gentrification: "In 1990, 672 white people lived in central Harlem; in 2008, there were 13,800. Columbia University has even sought to gobble up real estate to convert into student dormitories." In the FT, Bonnie Greer praised the book's style: "Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts marks herself out as a first-rate noticer with the gift of being able to allow us to notice things exactly when she does. Her lyrical prose flows like the human gaze: a glimpse here, a longer look there, a quick turning away when something is too contradictory, or too difficult to sort through"; Sandhu likewise compares her to Walter Benjamin, a poet of the unnoticed, working "through bricolage and delicately diaristic prose". In the Wall Street Journal, Edward Kosner is less pleased with "memoir mixed with social anthropology is at once affected and affecting", which compares unfavourably with other recent books on Harlem.

Leader: The unresolved Eurozone crisis

The eurozone crisis was never resolved. It was merely conveniently forgotten. The vote for Brexit, the terrible war in Syria and Donald Trump’s election as US president all distracted from the single currency’s woes. Yet its contradictions endure, a permanent threat to continental European stability and the future cohesion of the European Union.

The resignation of the Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, following defeat in a constitutional referendum on 4 December, was the moment at which some believed that Europe would be overwhelmed. Among the champions of the No campaign were the anti-euro Five Star Movement (which has led in some recent opinion polls) and the separatist Lega Nord. Opponents of the EU, such as Nigel Farage, hailed the result as a rejection of the single currency.

An Italian exit, if not unthinkable, is far from inevitable, however. The No campaign comprised not only Eurosceptics but pro-Europeans such as the former prime minister Mario Monti and members of Mr Renzi’s liberal-centrist Democratic Party. Few voters treated the referendum as a judgement on the monetary union.

To achieve withdrawal from the euro, the populist Five Star Movement would need first to form a government (no easy task under Italy’s complex multiparty system), then amend the constitution to allow a public vote on Italy’s membership of the currency. Opinion polls continue to show a majority opposed to the return of the lira.

But Europe faces far more immediate dangers. Italy’s fragile banking system has been imperilled by the referendum result and the accompanying fall in investor confidence. In the absence of state aid, the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank, could soon face ruin. Italy’s national debt stands at 132 per cent of GDP, severely limiting its firepower, and its financial sector has amassed $360bn of bad loans. The risk is of a new financial crisis that spreads across the eurozone.

EU leaders’ record to date does not encourage optimism. Seven years after the Greek crisis began, the German government is continuing to advocate the failed path of austerity. On 4 December, Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, declared that Greece must choose between unpopular “structural reforms” (a euphemism for austerity) or withdrawal from the euro. He insisted that debt relief “would not help” the immiserated country.

Yet the argument that austerity is unsustainable is now heard far beyond the Syriza government. The International Monetary Fund is among those that have demanded “unconditional” debt relief. Under the current bailout terms, Greece’s interest payments on its debt (roughly €330bn) will continually rise, consuming 60 per cent of its budget by 2060. The IMF has rightly proposed an extended repayment period and a fixed interest rate of 1.5 per cent. Faced with German intransigence, it is refusing to provide further funding.

Ever since the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, declared in 2012 that he was prepared to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the single currency, EU member states have relied on monetary policy to contain the crisis. This complacent approach could unravel. From the euro’s inception, economists have warned of the dangers of a monetary union that is unmatched by fiscal and political union. The UK, partly for these reasons, wisely rejected membership, but other states have been condemned to stagnation. As Felix Martin writes on page 15, “Italy today is worse off than it was not just in 2007, but in 1997. National output per head has stagnated for 20 years – an astonishing . . . statistic.”

Germany’s refusal to support demand (having benefited from a fixed exchange rate) undermined the principles of European solidarity and shared prosperity. German unemployment has fallen to 4.1 per cent, the lowest level since 1981, but joblessness is at 23.4 per cent in Greece, 19 per cent in Spain and 11.6 per cent in Italy. The youngest have suffered most. Youth unemployment is 46.5 per cent in Greece, 42.6 per cent in Spain and 36.4 per cent in Italy. No social model should tolerate such waste.

“If the euro fails, then Europe fails,” the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has often asserted. Yet it does not follow that Europe will succeed if the euro survives. The continent that once aspired to be a rival superpower to the US is now a byword for decline, and ethnic nationalism and right-wing populism are thriving. In these circumstances, the surprise has been not voters’ intemperance, but their patience.